Self-Managed Teams – Again

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Zappos, the zany shoe manufacturer is in the news again. This time they have decided to do away with the corporate structure and go to self-managed teams. No more bosses! You can read about their initiative here.

Yea!

Wait a minute. Not so fast.

Isn’t this a good idea? Put the workers who actually know what’s going on in charge and cut out all those useless layers of management. What could possibly go wrong?

This concept sounds pretty good on the surface and it has had some success with small and very focused teams. But, there’s a two-fold problem. First is human nature.

Whenever a group of people are together trying to accomplish a goal either a leader is appointed and given the authority to lead, or one will emerge through strength of personality. In fact, I’ve seen many examples of teams that had a leader but someone else, with a stronger personality who lacked the ability to control themselves, became the de facto leader.

In a group that has somehow formed even though there is no leadership hierarchy in the company to tell them to form, a leader will emerge, and there will be someone who will become the leader. Whoever that is may not be the best choice or even competent to lead.

There’s a reason we train leaders. It’s because untrained leaders usually mess things up.

A second problem could become even more serious. Responsibility and accountability. There’s a saying that “when everyone is in charge, no one is in charge.” That applies just as well to responsibility and accountability. There are legal issues involved. Let’s suppose that the team ends up doing something illegal. Who’s accountable for that? I’ve never seen a team made up of a bunch of people who would all raise their hands and claim blame. The result would be comical if it wasn’t so serious.

And that brings us to the real truth behind this whole self-managed concept. There is still someone or a group of someones in charge. There is still a boss at some level making decisions. Some hierarchy is necessary just to decide what workgroups are needed and what they need to do. Someone has to be able to settle conflicts and make final decisions. Someone has the ultimate responsibility and answers to the board and the shareholders (if it’s a public company). What this concept does is gut the supervisory and management levels of the organization. And that’s the very group from whence come the next senior leaders.